Last weekend I asked a coach (former international player - Thomas Cup, All-England, and so on) about the CN racquets; whether he thought they were the next version of Yonex, or were CN some special racquets made to China team's specs, or what. He replied that they probably were just the standard models except specially selected to match design specs as closely as possible (weight, balance point, uniform dimensions, etc). He told me that Indonesia once had a similar contract with Yonex. All their racquets were marked PSI. Also, when he had a contract with Carlton they gave him four plain black racquets with no name or logo one time and asked him to try them and pick the one he liked best. That's the one they put into production. This makes more sense as a testing procedure. So, maybe you don't need to look for a CN racquet, it could already be in your hand. Or in your opponent's hand. Maybe that's why he's been beating you ) This is going to be my new excuse, marshall
this CN topic had me thinking a bit since ricky and others had talked about in this forum. I can't see the logic of yonex stopping the production line, change the formulation or material composition, or other special treatments so that to conform to chinese specification. (hey, we all know that a racket doesnt make an international player, no matter how special it is). The best yonex can do is hand pick the best pieces off the moulding process and keep those within specified weight and balance point. Basically just some more labor in the selection processes. (Just like how intel make and sell their celeron and pentium CPUs). Thanks for confirming this, marshall.
This doesn't surprise me. Just like you said about CPU, a good Duron 700 can be overclocked to 1GHz+ but most can only get up to 850MHz. Yes, it is right that CN racquet is not radically different from retail model, i.e. a Ti-10 is a Ti-10, no matter it is 3U, 2U, CN or not. However there are differences exist - whether it is large or not is subjective, what I would say the difference is noticeable (just like CPU, the difference b/w a good one and bad one is noticeable). Btw, most people want to get the "best" unit, right ? You can think of the extra price you pay is a gurantee.
ricky, just like CPUs, it is likely that the selected good ones can be strung at slightly higher tension then what yonex had specificed tension for the statistical regular racquets of 18 to 20 lbs. Btw, i own a couple of overclocked celeron systems.
Hey guys, didn't I suggest this very explanation for CN racquets a couple of weeks ago? AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! (sound made while dislocating shoulder trying to pat my own back too hard)
